After a cagy meal of cheap Chinese — suspiciously eyeing diners showing any interest in our conversation — the man who has been the faceless face of Anonymous during this summer’s campaign of leaked secret government documents opens a fortune cookie: “People find difficult to resist you persuasive manner,” its broken English reads.

“I hope so,” he quips. He wants to persuade, although his tools and tactics are infinitely controversial.

This meeting was inordinately difficult to arrange. It required encrypted communication on various platforms, code words and passwords, trust and promises, travel to an undisclosed location, difficult logistics and strict technical requirements.

The result, however, is the only in-person interview with the spokesman for a cell of a secretive global hacktivist group engaged in a furious protest over July’s fatal RCMP shooting of an Anonymous protester in British Columbia.

The shooting brought a headline-grabbing vendetta: cyber attacks on police websites, demands for charges against officers, threats to reveal private information about investigators, allegations of gross misconduct by a public figure, heated rhetoric on social media and — most notably — the release of actual federal Cabinet secrets.